Djuhah
Djuhah is a significant Reformist figure in the Kingdom of Stormwind. Of mixed Westfallian and Yāmasc descent, she is a controversial figure in the nascent church and a close companion of Everen Corelas. Early Life Born into a poor family in rural Westfall, Djuhah's childhood can be best characterized as needy and often desperate. The third of eleven children, only Djuhah's earliest years saw anything resembling adequate finances for her family's needs, and that only due to both her parents having found work on a farm as labourers. This income quickly declined and by the time she was three, Djuhah not only had four siblings but had become part of the itinerant and near-permanently poor subclass of the Westfallian people, with her Yāmasc father facing prejudice in most villages and infrequently resorting to theft and robbery to support his growing family. As a result, the young woman's education was limited in many ways. With an empty belly many nights, she quickly began to dream of more and better things - of warm bread filling the stomachs of her siblings, of preachers who didn't force her often dirty and dishevelled family to sit in the back of the church, and of a life not spent in the back of a battered wagon. Over the years, the family grew and grey, and Djuhah quickly became the defacto caregiver for her younger siblings as both her mother and father took whatever work was available to put food in their bowls during increasingly lean years in Westfall - years in which the Defias Brotherhood became a more and more imposing force, more and more farmers lost their claims, and the wise fled Westfall. It was in these declining years of her childhood and adolescence that Djuhah became so dissappointed in an increasingly self-interested Church that she entirely ceased attending services and nearly abandoned her faith, given pause only by a handful of Ascetic wandering priests who travelled between farms and towns throughout Westfall. In these stark and disciplined figures, she saw the first glimmerings of a better path, of a clergy devoted to service, eschewing the wealth and influence that characterized many of the landed and rooted preachers who had shunned her family. It was also in this time that her Yāmasc heritage became increasingly apparent, in the cast of her features, the tone of her skin, and her use of queer and peculiar phrases rarely used by the bulk of the Westfallian population. Between the prejudice towards her people and her striking beauty - her brilliant green eyes in particular - the young woman endured both harassment and courting by many, often one and the same. Affections swiftly turned to bitter poison towards the 'gypsy trollop' when rejected, and the repeated message was clear: Yāmasc women were whores. Adulthood The constant repetition of the idea that she, as with all her people, were prostitutes (a prejudice born largely out of rivalry between landed Westfallians and unsettled Yāmasc for the high-paying harvest work, rather than fact) ultimately placed the seed of an idea in Djuhah's mind. Shortly after her eighteenth birthday, she left her family to travel East, to Elwynn Forest and the capital of the Kingdom of Azeroth. There, she took up the work she had been accused of in Westfall, sending the vast bulk of her earnings back to support her family. This situation continued for some years, reinforcing prejudices held against the Yāmasc in the city and townships and leading Djuhah to travel between them to avoid strife and trouble. It was during one of her wanderings that the young woman met a figure reminiscent of the Ascetics who had dominated her adolescence - Father Everen Corelas, the founder of the Reformed Church of Elwynn and Arathor, during his own roaming to spread the truth about Kastonism to the faithful of the forest. She put the priest to a test, making confession and deliberately seeking to provoke and antagonize. When met only with kindness and warmth, without leering grins or impropriety, she felt that this was a spiritual man she could follow, a man she could listen to. Joining the wandering old man in his travels, Djuhah quickly came to believe in his teachings as he helped her learn to read and write by studying the works of earlier holy men and by recording elements of the so-far unwritten Biblos. A religion founded on righteousness over officiality, on truth over lies, and on a willingness to serve rather than command appealed to her, offering her the equality and communion denied to her by the landed chapels of Westfall. And so - late in 623KY - she took the step of denouncing the Light and converting to the strange sect as one of the acolytes of the profetes, being schooled and prepared to take ordainment and the cloth in due time. Reformist Figure As an early convert to Reformism and one of the first assistants to Father Corelas, Djuhah has attained some status in the Reformist Church. Having helped record and preach The Book of the Wise Prophets, her scriptural knowledge is extensive and her compliance with most of the provisions of the Biblos undeniable. It is believed among many Southern reformists that she is being groomed as the replacement for the aging Father Corelas as the spiritual anchor of the flock. However, due to her former (and, rumoured, continuing) conduct as a prostitute, many of the faith's more conservative adherents believe she is unsuited to this role, and even a distraction to Corelas. Her frequent association with the notoriously unmarried priest have led to rumours among the faithful that his supposed vow of celibacy is being equally routinely broken. The bulk of her supporters reside in the flock of Elwynn, while her detractors tend to reside in the city or the Northern Hills of the Arathi Highlands. This divide has been cemented by her notable absence during the Second Arathi Civil War, during which she remained in the South to maintain the services and death-houses of those unfit to travel. Category:Reformist Faith Category:Characters